21

WORKING

THEY STARTED ME off with a human. Which made sense, when I thought about it, but it surprised me. After the seers I’d trained with, facing a human struck me as almost...easy. But I suppose that was kind of the point.

I think Ulai was more nervous than I was.

Well, maybe not. But he hovered over me through the whole lead-up process to the event and stood just inside the door during, so at least I didn’t feel alone through any of it.

I’d spent more than four days with the wardrobe people the week before. The process probably would have made a lot of my girlfriends back in San Francisco really happy, but I found myself looking at the ornate clock on the high table by the window approximately every thirty seconds, waiting for the few hours I would be released for infiltration training.

The wardrobe team, which consisted of three female seers and two males, seemed to find me almost superfluous, anyway...more so when I did such a terrible job of hiding my indifference around their endless tugging and pulling and wrapping and tying and hooking and buttoning and knotting and untying and mussing and playing. They dressed me up the way a child would dress a doll...or, really, how a department store staff probably dresses mannequins.

They would put me into dresses and skirts and shoes and wraps and scarves and various kinds of underwear only to take me out of them...I spent as much of the day naked as I did clothed. I stopped caring about that, too. When it was clear they’d gone back to the drawing board for this or that, half the time I didn’t even bother to put the robe back on, which was hot in the heated rooms anyway. Instead I just plunked myself down on the plush chair, my legs crossed as I sighed as loudly as I could at the ceiling.

Once they realized I didn’t give a damn, they talked amongst themselves more than they spoke to me, finding styles and colors that flattered my body and face, and that mixed with what they knew of client preferences...as apparently a preliminary list had already been provided, to everyone but me. They also discussed which clothes would be most compatible with the expectations of the sex itself, in terms of how they came off.

I suppose if I’d been in a different frame of mind, it would have had its fascinating moments...anthropologically speaking. The psychology of the whole thing had more to it than I’d ever really given much thought around before. By the end of the first day, I even found myself listening to them, here and there.

I realized by mid-morning on day two that I was fighting to understand this for real.

Some of it might have been pride. Jaden, my boyfriend of six or so years in San Francisco, told me once that I had no awareness of the male fondness for female clothing. He accused me of being a bit of a killjoy around that, actually. I knew all about the stereotypes around women manipulating men with that kind of thing, of course...but it was a power I’d never really learned how to wield, one that I’d frankly never had anything but contempt for.

But the reality was, this was my job now. I could remain as contemptuous as I wanted in the background, but the truth was, I needed to understand something about this, and take it more seriously if I was going to do this work for real. Maybe it was stupid, but I intended to not embarrass myself with my new crap job, at least not more than absolutely necessary.

I knew how dumb it was to get on a pride kick around that, but there it was.

Also, it was easier in some ways to think of it as a job...like acting, or even waiting tables. I knew something else lived there, too...something different than just pride on its own, or even an attempt to distance myself. Something a little too close to how I’d left things with Revik than I really wanted to admit to myself fully.

Despite the part of me that listened whenever the information struck me as useful in any way, when it came to watching them sew and assemble combinations of colors and swatches, I was bored out of my mind. I couldn’t keep my thoughts from wandering to infiltration. I even talked them into taking off my collar so I could practice while I waited.

I guess for a female, even a female seer, I really was hopeless.

I tried not to let my mind draw the inevitable conclusions about that, either...or to think too hard about the fact that the only two serious boyfriends I’d ever had both cheated on me with women who understood those games all too well.

The wardrobe team seemed as unimpressed with my indifference as I was with their artistic vision. Instead of dealing with me directly, they had servants ply me with tea and little noodle dishes, fruits and finger-length cakes, picture books and antique kaleidoscopes and virtual reality devices of various kinds...just to keep me out of their hair, most likely. When I asked them if I could work on infiltration, all of them seemed relieved. The lead costumer even went personally to get special permission from Voi Pai to uncollar me for the duration of the fittings.

They discussed me and my body without bothering to soften their voices, including what they saw as my “flaws” and my need for just about every beauty treatment under the sun. One of them seemed particularly affronted in regards to my hair, which shouldn’t have surprised me, I guess, given my lack of any real hair cut in the past year or so.

They set their team of beauticians to work on me with gusto the following day, even as they retreated back into the racks to continue the work of designing and creating clothing and accessory combinations for me once they deemed my actual body presentable. I had my eyebrows plucked, my legs and bikini area waxed. I got multiple facials, a pedicure, a manicure, my hair cut and styled, about two dozen make up combinations applied to my face, some of which I found positively frightening.

In the plus column, I also got a few massages. I had my skin buffed and covered in towels and hot rocks by four different seers. I was scrubbed and moisturized and finally rubbed raw and set in a steam room for over an hour...I had my feet rubbed.

Then they returned me to wardrobe yet again.

I suppose they all had their jobs to do. Pride and competition and saving face seemed as integral to the City as it was to anyone presenting their work on a runway in New York. They wanted the clients to at least be wowed by the presentation...whether or not they had their private doubts they’d be wowed by me. The problem was, they wanted an ecstatic, squealing, overjoyed client...blown away by the transformation they visited upon my previous shabbiness.

Instead, ironically I suppose, I found my mind aligning more with theirs. I looked at myself critically, standing outside of myself. I noted flaws, tried to decide if they would make me unique or be detracting. I tried to imagine the various reactions my appearance might evoke, depending on how I carried myself, how I held my arms and legs. I tried to predict how different styles might impact most male humans.

I tried also to see myself from a male seer’s perspective...or even a female seer’s. Imagining seer reactions to me was harder. I’d never known Revik’s thoughts on my looks really, except through observation. The Revik I married hadn’t said much, in terms of what attracted him to anyone, much less me. He’d told me I was beautiful once, but he’d also been trying to get me into bed. Syrimne had been more flattering, but it was all so caught up in his myth of the Bridge it never felt as personal as maybe it should have. I knew he was attracted to me, of course, but I had no idea what happened within that spectrum, or where I fit overall.

Anyway, I had no idea if he’d been attracted to me before we fell in love.

I had less experience with seers in general, at least those who would tell me the truth. From what Ulai told me, their reactions were invariably more complex anyway.

And, well...better hidden.

In any case, I saw my body and face as props, and as I looked around at the other props in the warehouse, I realized I wasn’t in a very good state of mind when I didn’t feel like I measured up to most of them.

Ulai told me I was being ridiculous. It actually seemed to anger him...he thought Revik had done a number on my self esteem.

Eventually, one of the wardrobe seers seemed to pick up on how I was viewing the whole thing. A female named Wahlu, she began speaking to me almost as a colleague. The others followed her lead, and by the third day, I could ask any one of them questions like what they were going for exactly with a particular color or style, what order I should undress in, how to hold my arms or where to stand to show off certain aspects of my body through the clothes. What male seers looked for, in terms of physical characteristics, and whether it was roughly the same as human men. Wahlu spent hours explaining how they designed the looks of different costumes, which pieces I should leave on, when and where I should discard others, what colors to use near my hair and skin. She told me a lot about male seers, even going over my body specifically, telling me what they would appreciate about it most...where I was still immature in some ways, in terms of how old I looked without clothes, and how to use that to my advantage or hide it, depending on the particular male.

She approached me where I was at...which was closer to how I approached the infiltration training. The truth was, I didn't really care how I looked, per se. I just wanted to know what the hell I was doing. I knew I would have to make this personal, at least to a degree, or I’d never be convincing to either the humans or the seers...but even that struck me as something that could be learned. If it wasn’t faking precisely, I could at least use my light selectively to evoke that feeling of intimacy without letting it happen on its own.

Something about me made the other seers sad.

I suppose it was the bond thing, what they could feel through me. I noticed it with Ulai first, but saw it a few times in Wahlu’s eyes, too, and even some of my classmates in infiltration class.

At some point, they must have taken Revik out of the tank. The separation pain had worsened gradually over the weeks I'd been there, until there was no way to hide it from the other seers. It got to the point where I was having trouble sleeping. I’d started dropping weight by week three or four. I could see from Ulai’s eyes, and even from a frown I caught from Voi Pai, that they’d started to worry.

Then, one morning it eased.

Somewhat, anyway...enough that I could keep food down. My breathing improved, and my light seemed to remember it belonged to my body. I even overslept that morning, probably because for the first time in over a week, the separation pain hadn’t woken me up off and on throughout the night, so I got a chance to catch up.

My light grew easier to control again too, which seemed to reassure Ulai. He told me, only after of course, that he’d been worried about whether I would be able to see clients at all in that state. He and Voi Pai had met a few times to discuss what they would do, in the event I got worse. They’d even discussed attempting to bond me to another seer, as that was the only partial solution that had ever been found to the problem.

Since that was a new one on me, I was a little surprised. I’d been told there was no cure at all for the bond.

Ulai confirmed that was essentially true. Re-bonding was risky as hell, and often didn’t take. Even when it did, it wasn’t always enough to keep the other seer alive. They’d only ever attempted it before when a bonded seer’s mate had actually died, and they were trying to save the life of the other half of the bonded pair.

When the pain eased, everyone around me relaxed.

It didn’t go away entirely, of course.

I knew it would probably remain about the same amount of bad indefinitely, at least if our previous periods of separation were any indication. It might even get worse, depending on what he started doing with his light on the other end.

But it did stabilize. I could even control it when I concentrated.

It also meant I was given the okay to start working.

MY FIRST REAL client, meaning the first person I slept with that the Lao Hu received actual payment for, was Yin Bao Xi, the current President and General Secretary of the Communist Party of the People’s Republic of China.

I guess maybe that shouldn’t have surprised me.

It did surprise me, though. In fact, it completely threw me when Ulai told me who he was. I’d seen his picture on the feeds, of course...in avatar form, anyway...but the avatar resembled him closely enough in the flesh that I had to fight a bout of nerves when they first led him to the door of my room.

He was surprisingly charming though, and not very demanding, in terms of the sex itself. The most difficult part had been holding him off. I got the impression he wasn’t used to seers...maybe not even to prostitutes...because he got so excited once I started taking his clothes off that most of my light was spent keeping him from climaxing before we’d done anything.

Afterwards, he was all smiles, and bowed to me so many times I had to fight not to smile.

He flattered me with his words, and also with his unwillingness to leave...and finally by asking me permission if he could submit his name to Voi Pai a second time.

I told him sure, and I meant it.

All I could think was, if every time was like him, I could definitely handle this. Maybe not forever, but long enough to pay off what Voi Pai decided I owed her.

I saw Ulai wink at me from the doorway as I finally showed him out. I could tell from the dense flush of pride and other emotions I felt in the pulse of warmth he sent my way that...at the very least...I hadn’t embarrassed him. Two days later, I received a bouquet of hothouse flowers. With it came a long velvet-covered box containing an emerald bracelet that probably cost more than my mother made in a year, working for the Post Office in San Francisco. Probably more than I made in two as a waitress in that crappy diner. It also included a note offering me a house in Beijing, if I ever grew tired of being a consort of the Lao Hu.

The whole thing kind of freaked me out, honestly. Even knowing it had more to do with what I was, not who, it just struck me as the most bizarre form of make-believe imaginable. The guy didn't know me at all, and he was trying to buy me houses. I couldn't even get Jaden to do the dishes when I had a cold.

Voi Pai seemed satisfied, though. She gave me access to the indoor pool in one of the buildings outside Meridian Gate, and offered me a horse of my own, a pure-blooded, white Arabian stallion named Ri, which I was told meant “intelligence.” It was the most beautiful horse I’d ever seen before, much less ridden, so I didn’t hide my disbelief when they led him out of the barn and put him through paces in front of me.

Again, their world struck me as this bizarre light show of delusion.

Still, people paid well for their delusions, I guess.

I knew I had it easier than probably anyone in this line of work on the planet, seer or human, but it didn't change the fact that I was letting people have sex with me for money. They could try and make it seem like some expensive "date" and ply me with million dollar horses afterwards, but it didn't change the reality of any of it. Anyway, that kind of thing had never really worked on me...the whole 'wow her with money' thing, I mean. I ended up feeling like I was acting even when I was just talking to others in the Lao Hu, pretending enthusiasm about things that struck me as almost childishly shallow.

Just having to be that “on” all the time was kind of exhausting. As soon as they were all gone, it was like the puppet strings got cut. I'd just lay there, usually without bothering to turn on the lights, relieved at the silence.

The rooms where they housed me had actually once been part of, and modified from, the original concubine’s quarters in use when the human Royal Family ruled the city. Instead of one of these rooms, however, we seer consorts generally received two...one for clients, and one for ourselves. The client’s room didn’t really belong to us in any real sense. Presentation artists made up the client-facing side...theatrically, of course. Following every meeting, that room, including all sheets, towels, blankets and dishes, was cleaned by servants I never saw, but who seemed to conduct their work with an almost obsessive attention to detail.

I actually had been granted three of these rooms, to provide padding between my clients and the outer walls...for security purposes, of course. I saw clients in the middle room, linking the other two. That was only one of the differences between me and the other consorts.

With the exception of their regulars, most of the other consorts only brought their clients back for sex after they’d been chosen from a line up, often assembled in a larger audience chamber. That audience chamber stood outside the gated security segment of the old concubine’s quarters, so they never actually had to bring anyone into their space until they were working. Further, if they weren’t chosen, they either waited for the next round, or went home for a few hours to chill out and live life.

Not so with me.

I had no regulars. I also didn’t get picked from a choice of other consorts.

I saw clients by appointment only.

As all of my clients were also heavy hitters in some way, either politically or economically, they didn’t come in through the front gates. They also expected more of an overall “experience,” and therefore required more than the usual courtesies. As part of the whole foreplay thing, this was often couched more like a date and took a lot longer. I was expected to serve tea and entertain them...give them an opportunity to talk to me and to spend time with me in the pre-show sense. I also followed the client’s timeline, at least within reason.

As a result, I usually spent at least half a day with each client. I think my shortest was around three hours...the longest closer to seven. I knew they paid handsomely for the privilege, but it wore me out by the time they left. It also often meant no infiltration training that day, which frankly bothered me more. I got catch up sessions at night sometimes, from Cilap and some of the others, but it wasn't the same; I wanted to be with my class.

Given my unique set up, I also had to learn more than just sex. For the whole tea ritual thing alone, I’d spent a few hours every day for weeks. Even then, Ulai still badgered me about elements of my delivery being not 'traditional' enough.

I had a seer’s memory now, so that part didn’t worry me so much as the small talk that was also required as part of the pre-game show. Both Voi Pai and Ulai warned me to be polite, but said that otherwise, I could essentially be myself. The problem was, I wasn’t entirely sure they knew what this actually meant, in regards to me. Most of my social skills were learned in human bars in San Francisco, and while I’d adapted to Seertown and even older seers like Vash and Balidor well enough to squeak by, I still got a head tilt and puzzled looks often enough to know I didn’t act like your average Asian seer.

The Lao Hu, Voi Pai in particular, educated all of the clients to expect an American, and a young one to boot. Since that was part of my marketing appeal in many cases, no one expected me to know the traditional forms of conversation or etiquette like the other consorts. But still, I didn’t exactly feel like I could just kick up my heels and “be myself” either.

So I did the best I could with what I had. Apart from making Ulai laugh aloud at one of my comments to a tech mogul from California, I think I did okay. But so far, I’d mostly been given humans to entertain, so I could read them for when I stepped too far out of line.

I think Voi Pai let me off the hook as well because, technically, all of the old forms said I should be the one receiving deference. The humans probably wouldn’t know this, but my seer clients certainly would...and while I didn’t expect anywhere near as many seers as humans, due to the financial constraints of hiring me, Ulai already told me a few made it relatively high on the list. High enough that I could expect to see the first of them within the next four weeks to two months, depending on scheduling constraints.

I didn’t find out until a number of months later just how much they charged for each of those little half-day visits, but even in the beginning, clearly it was a lot.

The order of my list changed almost daily, too. More important clients bumped down less important clients. Political situations shifted in the outside world, and at times, my list followed, depending on who the Communists wished to please at any given time. No one came out and told me, but at times I felt the pressure of this through Voi Pai. Ulai told me later that Voi Pai intended to widen the client base only if it seemed appropriate...or necessary. Until then, it was rich friends of the Chinese government, business moguls and Head’s of State.

That was pretty much it.

Also, despite the individualized nature of those invitations, whoever came to my client room had to go through about two hours’ worth of security protocols in order to gain access...in addition to the hour or so they had to endure to even get that far into the Imperial City.

Those were the “friends” of the Lao Hu, by the way.

Strangers, which usually meant friends of friends of the Lao Hu, pretty much had to wait all day before seeing me sometime in the evening...or most of the previous night to see me the following morning.

According to Miao, the waiting list for me already numbered in the hundreds by the time I’d actually seen my first client...and that included only those names for which they’d already conducted basic security screening. The original set of invites numbered only about fifty, but word apparently spread fast that the Bridge was in the City and being auctioned off to the highest bidders. Within a week, according to Miao, that list ballooned into three times its original size. A few hours with me was apparently the new cachet, at least amongst those living within the high-floating networks of the rich, unimaginative and chronically bored.

None of this flattered me, by the way.

From the beginning, it was pretty clear I was purely a trophy conquest in 98% of these cases...often simply a check mark in some power-freak’s bucket list. Or even more trite, dinner party fodder for their other rich friends, who of course immediately wanted their own names added to the list to keep up with the Joneses.

Nothing about that basic routine really changed until I got a good look at my third seer client.

The first two seers I saw were pleasant enough.

One, a high-ranking official in the Party, had left the Lao Hu’s formal ranks and essentially lived full-time among humans. Having sex with him was strange only because he was a seer, but he kept things light between us. I think curiosity about my Bridge status brought him there as much as anything, and other than liking the sex okay, he seemed disappointed I wasn’t more “mythic.” Still, he was polite. He also sent me a gift...a golden statue of the Bridge symbol that I plunked down on my bureau, unsure what else to do with it.

The second of the two was a middle-aged infiltrator named Surli, and the first person I saw who didn’t feel so much like a client. He’d been put on the list as a reward for thwarting an attempt at cyber-terrorism against the Republic, one that could have cost the state billions.

He’d come in informally, wearing the usual infiltrator black, and glanced around like he was in a museum. Then, finding me with his eyes, he stared at me, seer fashion...then grinned so wide I couldn’t help but smile back.

We only made it about halfway through tea before he asked me to take off my clothes and pulled me into his lap. Despite this, I had more real conversation with him than I did with perhaps anyone who came into that room, client or otherwise. He wanted to talk to me during breaks between sex, during sex, after sex...he even asked me out afterwards, wanting to know if I had free time to see seers socially, apart from clients.

He was also the only one to ask me directly about Revik.

He wanted to know if I was still bonded to him, if the rumors about me killing him were true, why I was being unfaithful to him, and if that meant I was open to bonding to someone else. After stammering at him in shock for a few seconds, I tried to tell him I wasn’t really supposed to talk about any of that, but he pushed me until I told him more or less the truth.

In fact, at one point, he made me cry, pushing me to open to him.

We ended up having sex on the floor almost roughly, him reading me while I fought my way through the worst case of pain I’d had since I’d gotten there. He’d wanted me to call him by Revik’s name, if only to get my reaction. I hadn’t been able to do that...but he opened me enough that both of us lost control...I only managed to talk him down long enough that he lasted past the worst of it. And even through that, he was talking to me, cursing Revik even as he continued to try and get me to feel it...to move past the thing between us, maybe.

I didn’t know how to tell him that that probably wasn’t going to happen.

He left reluctantly, about eight hours later, and I found myself making out with him in the doorway, and telling him I’d try to find some way to see him again.

When I asked Ulai, he’d seemed amused at first.

Then, after reading my light for a few minutes, he actually got jealous. He did ask Voi Pai on my behalf if I could see Surli again, and she’d agreed to it with her usual dismissive wave, as long as it was on my own time and didn’t interfere with clients.

When I passed a message to him, however, he had mysteriously been redeployed in the States. He messaged me back at once, promising to visit once he was back in town. We ended up communicating at least every few days after that, via the secure network, but he soon got so busy that it got pushed out to once every week.

I distinctly got the impression that we were being kept apart by someone...or possibly several someone’s. I didn’t know who was behind it, but I suspected Voi Pai, despite her surface indifference to my personal life. I wasn’t sure if she was trying to keep me focused on work, or if there was some other reason, but it was a little depressing.

In addition to the rest, Surli was funny...and charming. I’d liked him.

He’d also been good with his light. Really good, and he’d liked mine, enough to try and coax me to open more, well past where Ulai warned me not to go with any of my clients. The one time he got me part of the way there, I’d seen it in his eyes, right before he pulled on me harder, groaning as he let me into more of his. He’d climaxed not long after that, but he spent the rest of our time together trying to get me to go there with him again.

With Surli gone, it was back to the usual parade of...nothing.

Most of my clients were fine, not jerks or anything. I got a lot of presents...a fair number of which I gave to the other consorts, or my wardrobe people, at least once I found out I couldn’t trade them in as any part of my debt to the Lao Hu. I kept the jewelry, and the gold and jade...and the few pieces of fine art I received. It wasn’t a vanity thing; I like art, sure, but on a certain level, it also constituted a bunch of junk I couldn’t really move easily if I needed to.

I kept them so I’d have something when I got out of there. Insurance, I guess.

Certain things Revik had told me about the reality of most seers’ lives kept reverberating through my head, including what he said about the dangers of being poor and a seer. He was obsessive about having savings of some kind...preferably a lot of savings, spread over multiple accounts and in different currencies. He did it partly so he wouldn’t be forced to do work he didn’t want to do, but mostly I suspected he kept it as bribe money, in case he or anyone he cared about ever got into trouble and he needed to pay their way out.

Very few problems couldn’t be solved in the human world with enough money.

I’d never really felt comfortable relying on other people for that kind of thing...including the Seven, who, like Revik, also assured me I would never need to worry about money. Maybe it was watching my mother rapidly go broke due to an insurance policy “glitch” when my father got MS...after he’d worked his whole life and had savings and paid his premiums and all the rest of it. Or maybe I’d just learned a long time ago that people said a lot of things that didn’t always pan out, no matter how good their intentions.

So when Voi Pai refused to take any of my “gifts” in lieu of hours worked, I didn’t argue. I hoarded my stuff. And when I got enough of it, I asked Ulai to help me open a bank account and I sold a bunch of it. From that point on, I started hoarding cash, too.

Ulai seemed to approve of my approach. He elected himself my financial advisor, and even helped me invest some of it, utilizing some of the market experts in the Lao Hu. He also helped me spread it around a bit, like Revik did, so I wouldn’t be overly reliant on the Chinese economy in case something happened.

My mother would laugh if she knew I had a Swiss bank account, but I found the knowledge oddly reassuring. I also had money in the United States, and in England.

In terms of “what next” after this, I’d already been offered a few positions in China, both within the Lao Hu and for the government directly, doing something like what Surli did. I found myself taking those offers seriously. For one thing, I’d be safe in China...relatively speaking. Despite the debacle in Hong Kong, most of the Chinese seers seemed to have come to peace with me. And, of course, the Chinese human government very much wanted me to stick around, as a permanent, willing and loyal member of their seer family. They wanted my title, I suppose. They also probably hoped I’d propagate little baby telekinetic seers.

More than anything, they wanted me as leverage against the West. There was still a lot of fear around telekinetic seers. Thanks to the image captures on the Registry job, all speculation as to whether I could use my powers to kill had been handily laid to rest.

There was some chance they’d force the issue, of course, when it got time for me to leave, but I kind of doubted they’d throw me in a cell and start experimenting on me. Too many seers would get pissed off...and in the City, at least, most now seemed to believe me that Revik was alive and well and would soon be rejoining seer society. Revik’s rumored good health went a long way towards calming down a lot of the seer-traitor and mate-traitor crap I would probably have to deal with in the West for the next several decades.

Seers in the West were just more pissed off...and really, with good reason.

All in all, my life moved forward. I worked off the debt to the Lao Hu, and managed to keep my mind almost totally off how I was doing it. I saved money. Every now and then, I tried to think about what I might do when I got out, where I might go. I was friendly to the other seers, and rode my horse when I had free time, or talked to Surli on the network.

Then, on a day finally warm enough to make me think wistfully about the approach of spring, Voi Pai called me into her receiving room, and I got a good look at my third seer client.